Review of Keith Thomson’s "Jefferson’s Shadow: The Story of His Science"

M. Andrew Holowchak is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Rider University.

While books on Jefferson’s intimate
life are superabundant, books on Jefferson’s views of science are infrequent. Thus, when I purchased Keith Thomson’s Jefferson’s
Shadow, I placed the book beneath a small pile of books “to be
read shortly”—a sort of desert in which I was to indulge after
having gotten through a main course of more laborious readings on
political theory and ethics.

I was surprised to
find no motivation for the book by Thomson other than an invitation
by Andrew O’Shaughnessy of the International Center for Jefferson
Studies. One, for instance, wishes to know how his work differs from
other works—specifically, Edward Martin’s excellent Thomas
Jefferson: Scientist, or Silvio Bedini’s compendious and more
recent Jefferson and Science. What does Thomson add that
others have missed? What has Thomson corrected that others have
gotten wrong? We are never told.

The book comprises
19 (generally short) chapters belonging to six parts: The Young
Jefferson; Natural Science; They, the People; Useful Knowledge; The
National Stage; and Philosophical Issues. Par one, The Young
Jefferson, might indicate that Thomson is pursuing a historical
approach to Jefferson and science. The book does have a loose
historical cohesion, but many chapters are broached topically—e.g.,
chapter 14 begins with Jefferson’s interest in climate in 1776—so
there is some confusion apropos of Thomson’s approach.

That noted, the
book overall is comprehensive, often reasonable, and even peppered
with insights. Thomson’s account of Jefferson’s view of Blacks
and American Indians in Part 3 is fair. His treatment of skin color
in chapter 11 is especially illuminating. Furthermore, Thomson’s
account of Jefferson’s view of the West distinctly captures
Jefferson’s optimism, and excitement. Moreover, when Thomson turns
to Jefferson’s concern with controlling the pestiferous Hessian fly
in chapter 15, he limns some of the political implications of
governmental intervention in such issues for Jefferson’s vision of
a thriving republic.

Thomson’s writing is relaxed and accessible, but ideas in chapters
and paragraphs are often thrown together without regard for
relevance. Consider the gallimaufry of ideas in this particular
paragraph.

For
Jefferson, rhetoric and logic were a crucial complement to Bacon’s
teaching on the scientific method itself. He also followed closely
Newton’s rules for reasoning. The first was ‘We are to admit no
more causes of natural things than such as are both true and
sufficient to explain their appearances,’ and the second was
‘Therefore to the same natural effects we must, as far as possible,
assign the same causes.’ But Jefferson was not just a
philosopher-scientist; he also had a lawyer’s frame of mind (32).

The introductory sentence is about
Bacon. Thomson then turns to Newton. He ends with a thought
completely out of the blue. How precisely do the three sets of ideas
relate to each other?

The book is also
riddled with misleading sentiments, if not inaccuracies, that mar the
scholarship.

In chapter 3,
Thomson sums thus Newton’s first law: “Any object will naturally
move in a straight line at a constant velocity” (26). The law of
inertia tells us more: that a body in rest in empty space will remain
at rest.

In chapters 6 and
7, Thomson writes: “Jefferson believed that the earth had been
created by God as described in the Book of Genesis” (73); “He
always denied, on grounds of biblical authority, that extinction of
species ever occurred”; and “Jefferson … believed in a God who
was the creator of all. And thus he gave credence to the account of
Creation in Genesis and its implication that the earth was very young
and that life on earth had been created only once” (75-6).
Jefferson never explicitly makes purchase of the creation account(s)
in Genesis. There is no reason to think he took very serious the Old
Testament. In his “Syllabus,” Jefferson speaks of the Jewish
ideas of deity as “degrading & injurious,” and suggests that
the sole contribution of Jewish moral thinking was monotheism.i
Thomson unfortunately leads us to none of Jefferson’s writings that
might support his view.

In chapter 6,
there is Jefferson’s refusal to accept extinction of species. That
point is iterated in chapter 8. “He did not believe in extinction,
and that view seems to have been based in large part on religious
rather than scientific grounds” (89). “Jefferson never changed
his mind about extinction of species, although he understood that
races and populations … might become extinct” (90). Jefferson’s
letter to John Adams (11 Apr. 1823), where Jefferson acknowledges
“certain races of animals are become extinct,” Thomson cites as
evidence of Jefferson’s refusal to accept extinction. He focuses on
Jefferson’s employment of “races,” where he could have used
“species.” The letter, ambiguous, could also be taken as grudging
acceptance of extinction, for there is no reason to think Jefferson’s
use of “races” is not equivalent to “species.” In addition,
it seems strange that Jefferson would be close-minded to extinction
of species in later life, when so many of the leading scientists of
his day had begun to accept it as factual.

In chapter 8,
Thomson criticizes Jefferson’s approach to science vis-à-vis his
account of the fossilized remains of Megalonyx. Jefferson saw
the remains to be those of a great lion of some sort and prepared a
paper to be read before the American Philosophical Society in 1797
and published in its Transactions in 1799. When apprized of a
similar skeleton of an animal from South America (Megatherium)
that was recognized to be a ground sloth, Jefferson did not change
his mind, but merely added an appendix to his paper. Thomson says:
“Jefferson’s use of the scientific method can be criticized
because instead of gathering facts impartially and then analyzing
them (the way his idol Bacon had urged), Jefferson had worked a
priori. He had started with his lion idea and then tried to prove it.
Worse, when that identification was disproven, he still did not
completely relinquish the theory” (89).

Even Bacon
recognized that one cannot merely gather facts impartially without
some at least tentative hypothesis. If one wishes to know why dozens
of passengers on a cruise ship have become ill, grouping together the
ill and non-ill and seeing what foods each person in both groups has
eaten involves the hypothesis, The cause of illnesses is a type
of food. Moreover, Jefferson refused to “completely relinquish”
his hypothesis not because his initial “identification was
disproven,” but because gaps in the skeletal remains of the two
animals led to lingering doubts. Consider Edward Martin’s more
circumspect handling of the event over 50 years ago in his book.
“This decision [to retain the great-lion hypothesis] was consistent
with Jefferson’s own demand that scientific conclusions be reached
with greatest caution after the most careful investigation of all the
facts. Perhaps he considered his postscript sufficient notice that
the identification was tentative.”ii

The final part,
“Philosophical Issues,” seems forced—de trop. For illustration,
in chapter 17, we are told that Jefferson qua scientist can be placed
in context by better understanding Adams’s views of science. Why?
We are then told of Adams’s impatience with theory, of his interest
in the “generation of Shell fish,” and of other minutiae. Thomson
sums, “Digressions and odd enthusiasms notwithstanding, in the
realm of science and philosophy, Adams tended to remain the practical
man and Jefferson the intellectual” (238). The summation is
strained. Jefferson too was fixated on useful knowledge and had
little tolerance for knowledge per se. The difference was that
Jefferson recognized, as did Hutcheson before him,iii
that what at one time seems useless may at another time acquire a
use.

In sum, the
excitement that I had for the book when I began it quickly
diminished. Most of the material in Thomson’s book had been covered
and perhaps covered better by Martin. Much of what was not—e.g.,
all of Part 6—seemed irrelevant. It is unfortunate that Thomson has
been unable to improve upon Martin’s book, written 61 years ago.

iii
Francis Hutcheson, A Short Introduction to
Moral Philosophy in Three Books; Containing
the Elements of Ethicks and the Law of Nature, Second Edition
(Glasgow: Robert and Andrew Foulis, 1753), 70-87.